Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Discover the Networks

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Delete. Cbrown1023 21:40, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Discover the Networks

Discover the Networks (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) - (View log)

A right-wing website which exists, apparently, to expose the "vast left-wing conspiracy". No significant independent sources cited, only one hit on Google News (a blog), two hits on Factiva, both unrelated. Guy (Help!) 12:09, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

  • Delete - Fails WP:N in oh so many ways. As a bonus it skirts dangerously close to WP:FRINGE. On a related note, participants in this AfD will receive a free tin-foil hat. -- Y|yukichigai (ramble argue check) 12:22, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete, if it is supported by an organization so notable that it is red-linked there can't be much. Problems with WP:N and WP:V and so on does not make it likely that I could change my mind. And please keep the tin-hat, I prefer mine made from a National Enquirer page Alf photoman 16:11, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete per nom as non-notable. The article on the creator, David Horowitz, already mentions the website, and that's about all we need on it. Hut 8.5 16:55, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep founder of site is notable (David Horowitz), site has an alexa ranking of 306K [1] which while not spectacular I believe is good enough for mention on this encyclopedia. Non-trivial coverage of website at Salon.com [2]. Article should be renamed "Discover the Network" however to reflect the correct name of the site.--Jersey Devil 20:41, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
  • The fact that the founder is notable means we can have an article on him. Which we do. You could even justify a redirect from this title to that article. What about this group, though? Guy (Help!) 21:34, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep Justified for Wikipedia NPOV in any case. Following Jersey Devil's link I see the Alexa of SourceWatch is 42k and MediaMatters only 12k. And, Alf photoman, David Horowitz Freedom Center was redlinked because it was misspelled, not because it was not notable. This article is a stub and has an anti-Horowitz POV currently, but keep it for others to work on. Incidentally, it doesn't need renaming, since Horowitz renamed it from Network to Networks some time back (it seems both names work as urls). And I notice that adds ANOTHER 1,563k to the Alexa. And here's another left near counterpart with a Wiki entry, MediaTransparency, more used than the other two, but still with only about a quarter of DTN's combined Alexa. By the way, the non-trivial coverage of DTN required by WP:N doesn't have to be favorable. All the accusations of guilt-by-association count. ("Web-specific content is notable if...The content itself has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the site itself.") And, no it's not all FrontPageMag reprints. Looking at Google and backing out a reference I found, e.g., [3]. I dunno what proportion came from Horowitz's other enterprises -- do you?[citation needed] If you claim WP:V, give an example. If WP:FRINGE, be more specific. Sounds to me like "Fog in Channel, Continent Isolated". Andyvphil 09:22, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Comment - I hate to be a pain, but you do realize that low Alexa ranks mean more visited, right? As in, a rank of 1 should mean the website is the #1 most visited site on the Internet? That Wikipedia's is generally around 10 at the moment? That there are about 306,000 websites more commonly visited than the subject of this article? And that rankings are not additive? -- Jonel | Speak 14:12, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
      • Reply Not a pain, at all. I followed Jersey Devil's link and didn't read closely enough. I stand corrected, and am happy to have my misunderstanding corrected. Nonetheless, if JD is right that DTN's traffic is sufficient, adding DTNs' has to make the case stronger.
      • I actually don't have a VERY strong feeling that DTN needs to be a separate article. Probably it does. Only Will Bebeck seems to realize that deleting the article just means folding the material into the Horowitz article, which is long enough already. What I do have a strong feeling about is this poll, which seems animated by an animus against the content of the site rather than it's notability. I don't know exactly how much WP:N is required to justify an article on Wikipedia but it's obvious that there are a LOT of articles on Wikipedia on subjects with a lot less WP:N. WP:V has mostly to do with how you cite the site, right? And accusing it of WP:FRINGE says more about where you are than Horowitz. So WHY are we discussing deleting this article? If someone searches for info on DTN do we really want them to wade through the Horowitz article? Andyvphil 00:36, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
        • I wouldn't suggest merging the material to the Horowitz article. I do suggest merging it with FrontPageMag.com. I'm sorry I wasn't clear before. I'll annotate my comment. -Will Beback · † · 02:42, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
          • Thanks for the clarification. Both Photoman and Guy had mentioned the Horowitz article, so I assumed you were on the same page. Actually, if you were going to merge it anywhere, I would think the root article is David Horowitz Freedom Center, which could use the material. Organizationally FrontPageMag and DTN are on the same level - see the "Ongoing Programs" list at [[4]]. It might be justified to reconsider the decision not to delete FrontPageMag.com, and fold it too into David Horowitz Freedom Center. And Students for Academic Freedom too, while you're at it. With redirects, of course. But this is because of the paucity of material in Wikipedia, not because of WP:N. If someone were to write up a description of that java ap on DTN (it would be really cool to have something like that as a view of the links between Wikipedia articles!) or otherwise describe DTN at length it would unbalance the DHFC article and should be spun off. But I, e.g., am not yet enough of a Wikipedian to know how to do that step, so that I am not convinced it isn't better to leave the framework of nodes, WP:N but stubs, in place.... But that's not the discussion that started here. The proposal to delete and initial comments were couched in terms dismissive of the CONTENT of the site ("vast left-wing conspiracy", "fringe", "tin-foil hats", etc.) that invited the conclusion that the proposal was partisan. I know, WP:AGF... but it's not non-rebuttable. Andyvphil 15:13, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
            • I don't think the afd or some of the votes were made in bad faith, however it does appear that some are allowing their bias to cloud their judgement somewhat. DTN is the exact ideological opposite of SourceWatch MediaMatters, MediaTransparency and NameBase -all sites which operate on the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy thesis. It also doesn't appear that they're supported by any better cites than this article is. So it looks like there are plenty of tin foil hats to go around. However, I think all of these articles are useful. In fact, I think they should be kept so that when they're used as sources for articles, (which is a far bigger problem IMHO due to their advocacy POVs) we at least have the ability to wikilink them for full disclosure. One other thing, regarding Will's observation that it's an archive of FP articles. I don't think that's entirely correct. DTN is a distinct project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center and appears to have a lot of additional content, however it isn't mentioned in that article at the moment and it should be. <<-armon->> 23:48, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
            • Hmm... didn't you just "wikilink" to NameBase even though it doesn't have its own article? Anyway... Horowitz claims about DTN that "[t]he sources for the facts entered and the interpretations based on them have been made as transparent as possible" [5]-- I'm not clear if he's referring to more than just the hyperlinks embedded in the text -- and if true one mostly shouldn't use DTN as a source. I've done a little work on sections of the Horowitz article written by individuals with an anti-H POV and one of the things I found most obnoxious was contributors who cited MediaMatters or somesuch for what Horowitz said when the original text is readily available. Andyvphil 14:21, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
                • (Yeah Brant is a whole other issue) Just to clarify, I don't think any of them are good sources, but in real-world WP you will find editors who insist -more of pragmatic argument than an idealistic one. In any case, I think they should all be kept according the the philosophy behind WP:TIGERS. <<-armon->> 00:14, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
                • Who Brant?... My own view is that even non-reliable sources can be useful as long as they don't agree. They do a lot of the spadework and the disagreements are instructive. But that's beside the point, here. The AfD poll shouldn't be about whether DTN is reliable, but about whether DTN is so un-notable that merging it away and possibly splitting it off later is worth the investment in time. It's not as if there's a shortage of Wikipedia articles that could be worked on instead. Guy, at least, offered a metric for his claim of non-notability, though I can't decode it, but Yukichigai picked up on his animus against the site's content instead. Alf photoman gave a reason for considering the subject non-notable (that I debunked),Hut 8.5 offered his opinion that the content should be buried in the Horowitz aricle (already pushing 30k)...and we end up with 70.51.231.96's "not influential or that notable" opinion. My understanding is that this is a debate, not a vote. If there's opposition you need to come armed with more than unsupported opinion. Andyvphil 01:14, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete.(merge to FrontPageMag.com) It appears mostly to be an archive of Front Page articles. It does not appear to be notable in its own right. -Will Beback · † · 04:07, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Weak Delete. One of several David Horowitz web projects, doesn't seem to meet WP:WEB in its own right, and anything worth covering can be done in the David Horowitz article. Dragomiloff 05:28, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep per Andyvphil -he makes a very good case. <<-armon->> 12:46, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge to David Horowitz or his foundation or FrontPageMag.com or one of the many already existing articles on him and his projects. This project is not influential or that notable, thus it is hard to justify its inclusion in Wikipedia as a standalone article. --70.51.231.96 18:06, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete or possibly merge into a section on the Frontpagemag article. This should be removed due to lack of notability. A Google search for ("Discover the Networks" "David Horowitz") returned 700 hits, which is close to zero in the Google universe. MaxPont 11:09, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Change it to "Discover the Network" and you get another 27,800. Dropping "David" adds another 1,000. Drop "Horowitz" and you get 73,000 for "Discover the Networks" and another 124,000 for "Discover the Network". Is this still zero? Andyvphil 11:44, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
  • "Discover the Network" is a generic phrase (without the -s) so is "David" and "Horowitz" if they stand by themselves MaxPont 11:51, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
  • "Discover the Network" was the initial name of DTN, before Horowitz renamed it. To repeat, "Discover the Network"AND"David Horowitz" returns 27,800, not 700. Most "discover the network"(only) hits do not refer ro DTN, but Google apparently rates it the most notable meaning of the phrase because 9 of the first ten links are to references to DTN. Thanks for at least attempting a metric, tho. I don't think DTN is all that notable, but I don't think it's all that non-notable either, and it satisfies the technical definition of notable ("subject of multiple, non-trivial published works"). So why delete it? Wikipedia_is_not_a_paper_encyclopedia.WP:NOT#PAPER Andyvphil 13:03, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete per nom... Addhoc 13:30, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.